


Ashes

by AncientCovenants



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Coda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:47:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24559390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AncientCovenants/pseuds/AncientCovenants
Summary: Michael finally gets to see Alex.Spoilers for S2E11 "Linger".
Relationships: Michael Guerin & Alex Manes
Kudos: 30





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This will probably fall to the wayside once S2E12 "Crash Into Me" airs but I needed to write to process my feelings and this came out of it. Title is from “Ashes” by Celine Dion.

“Alex.”

The name fell from his lips unbidden, a breathless sigh.

The door, their only exit, was shut and locked. He wondered how long he had left until whatever Helena Ortecho injected him with wore off so he could get Alex back home.

And from the look of him, it needed to be sooner rather than later. His head had a nasty gash on it, his hair matted to his face with dried blood. Logically, he knew that head wounds tended to bleed worse than they were. _Logically,_ he knew that. But he couldn’t stop that traitorous voice in his head that said that he was too late, that Alex was concussed or, worse, that there was brain damage…

He knelt down next to him, hands itching to touch, to confirm what he already knew in his heart, that this was the man he’d risked everything for. Alex still had a faraway look in his eye, still hadn’t even acknowledged anyone was in the room with him. “Alex?” It was getting harder to keep a level head when all he wanted to do was destroy everyone who had ever hurt the man in front of him. “Hey… can you hear me?”

That voice in his head offered that either Alex was having an episode from his PTSD or he had snapped altogether and there was nothing left. Neither of those options were ones he was willing to accept so he kept trying. “Alex?”

He tentatively laid a gentle hand on his arm. Alex flinched and he swallowed down the bile that rose in his throat. Alex was staring at him like he was someone he hadn’t been expecting and, damn, if that didn’t break his heart just a little bit more.

Then, Alex blinked, his brows knitting together like he was piecing together a puzzle, recognition starting to dawn on his face.

He let out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding as he smiled. “Hey, there you are.” This was progress and progress was good. Step one, check out the worrisome head wound, make sure it really did look worse than it was. He slowly rose his hand again, trying to angle Alex’s face towards what little light they had so he could see it better.

Perhaps he should have said all this out loud because he suddenly found himself with _Alex the airman,_ the Alex that had gone to war and fought tooth and nail to get back home after nearly getting killed in Iraq. The Alex that currently saw him as a threat.


	2. Chapter 2

In an even fight where he didn’t rely on his powers for help, Michael was woefully aware that getting into the occasional fistfight didn’t get him anywhere close to Alex’s military training. And though he didn’t particularly want to die before making absolutely sure Alex would be safe, he also didn’t want to hurt him. At all, preferably. He’d been hurt enough by the ones he loved.

The problem was that Alex didn’t seem to have gotten that memo as he was currently trying to choke the life out of him. He wasn’t sure if it was his brain or his heart telling him that if Alex killed him, he’d never forgive himself. And Alex’s well being meant everything to him, so he’d keep fighting in any and every way he could.

He was beaten and bloody, but he wasn’t dead yet.

“Don’t--” Where those black spots there a second ago? “You don’t wanna do this--” Those spots were multiplying, rapidly. “ _I’m not a threat to you!”_

Alex leaned down and practically hissed in his ear.

_“Liar!”_

His genius increased when he was pissed off. He’d told Liz just that when he’d somehow managed to make Max a personalized pacemaker in seven hours.

Which is why, when confronted by an Alex that actually seemed to believe that he ever meant to do him harm, he did just that. He got pissed off.

Not at Alex, but at Jesse for putting ridiculous thoughts in his head. At Flint who barely even had a personality outside of being the good little soldier who followed his daddy’s indoctrination without thought and had now paired up with an even greater evil. At Helena Ortecho, whom he swore he was going to tear apart with his bare hands regardless of the fact that she was Liz’s mother.

He’d seen the fractal burn on the back of Alex’s neck during their scuffle, had spotted at least three different injection sites in the middle of it. The pattern of physiological electrical disruption and what was likely some sort of biological warfare made him think that perhaps a court martial wasn’t _all_ they’d been planning to do to Alex.

Deep Sky was looking for a weapon to use against the “alien threat” —

_“I’m not a threat to you!”_

_“Liar!”_

— Alex was their _failsafe._

They’d turned Alex into _a weapon._

Michael gasped for air as the vice grip around his neck tightened.

_“Alex!”_

It wasn’t his fault, none of this was his fault…

_“I-I forgive you.”_

Not Alex, never Alex, he had to know that…

“ _I forgive you.”_

And the world blinked into black.


	3. Chapter 3

Consciousness was slow in coming. One by one his senses came to, providing him enough input to register that his nightmare was real.

He felt the hard ground beneath him, the soreness of his throat.

He smelled the iron of blood, tasted the bitterness of despair.

He heard silence, loud and oppressive.

He didn’t need eyes to see Alex curled in a ball as far from him as possible.

His pain was so palpable that it had him turning on his side, collapsing in on himself as he tried to remember how to breathe.

“I thought I killed you.”

The voice was so small and defeated that he barely registered what it said.

Until he did.

He looked up at the figure huddled in the corner. It was too small, too _something_ that he couldn’t put his finger on…

It wasn’t what it was supposed to be, bright and shining and strong and…

_“I thought I killed you.”_

Alex was _hurting_ and he knew why.

That thing he couldn’t name, it was the very opposite of what was supposed to be in front of him.

It was the loss of _hope._

He had to fix it. It was wrong, _intrinsically,_ he could feel it in every fiber of his being…

Alex never lost hope. He held on to warmth and love and fought with everything he had to keep that.

Michael swallowed, hoping his voice wouldn’t betray the pain he was in.

“I’m right here.”

He wasn’t sure Alex heard him. Then, ever so slowly, he raised his head and looked at him, eyes assessing the damage he’d done.

He tried not to shiver at his gaze. He could be strong, he could take the pain in every way it came because that meant Alex didn’t have to.

Alex closed his eyes and leaned his head back, taking a deep breath. He took it as a sign he could move so he dragged himself up to sit with his back against the wall, keeping a view of both Alex and the door.

The door still wouldn’t budge but if he tried hard enough he could _maybe_ feel the tumblers in the door’s lock. Close, so close…

“Why did you come?”

He blinked at the absurdity of the question, looking sharply at Alex, the answer as easy as breathing.

“I’ll always come for you.”

Alex cracked open his eyes. Half-lidded, he looked tired, defeated. He decided he hated that look on him.

“It’s a trap.” He scoffed. _That_ was the understatement of the century. “You had to have known that. They used _me_ to get to _you_.” Alex hung his head, shaking it. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Did he really think that he could stay away, even if he wanted to?

“I didn’t know they wanted me. All I knew is that you were missing.” It was all that mattered. Find Alex, save him, get him home. _Keep Alex safe._ “By the time I found out, it was too late.”

He’d said too much. He knew the second Alex snapped his head up, eyes narrowing at him, suddenly alert.

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing.” He couldn’t meet his eyes, couldn’t handle a man as good and decent and selfless as Alex knowing what he’d done.

He wouldn’t drop it, he knew, but it still hurt all the same as Alex kept pressing, digging into the wound to fish out the truth.

“Guerin, why do they want you?”

The wound kept bleeding, opening up under Alex’s probing words. He grit his teeth. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It _does_ matter.” Alex was on the verge of sounding hysterical and Alex didn’t _do_ hysterical. He was cool and calm and collected and, yes, _passionate_ about the things he believed in, but he never lost control like this. “I’m nothing more than a _bargaining chip…_ ”

He felt a phantom punch at that, straight to the heart. “Alex—”

_“_ What did you _do?”_

He raised his eyes, defiant, to meet Alex’s head on with a look that tried _—oh, so very hard—_ to say, _‘what makes you think I did anything?’_

It was too bad he wasn’t buying it.

“They wouldn’t have put you in here with me if you hadn’t already done what they’d wanted.” Desperate eyes searched his, pleading for a truth he didn’t want to hear. _“_ Michael, _what did you do?”_

He closed his eyes. He was so tired. Tired of hiding, tired of not being able to put into words what he thought and felt, tired of guarding himself so that he didn’t get hurt. It was exhausting and he didn’t want to do it anymore. Would it really be so hard to lay all his cards on the table and let the chips fall where they may?

_“If anyone’s gonna destroy me, might as well be you.”_

And so he told Alex exactly what he asked for: the truth.

“They wanted me to make a bomb. It was Flint’s design but they needed an engineer to make it compatible with Charlie’s work.”

He could sense the precise moment that the implications sunk their jagged hooks into Alex’s soul.

“ _No…_ tell me you didn’t.” He wanted to, he wanted to say it so badly it ached in his bones. “Michael?!” It was a question and an order and he wanted to obey, he wanted to be good but—

“What was I supposed to do?”

—but he wasn’t.

Alex made a noise like a wounded animal, begging for him to take it back. “Not _that…_ ”

He looked at him then, leveling his eyes so that Alex _could see_ his righteous indignation because he _couldn’t_ see the simple truth that outweighed all the others.

“They were going to kill you.”

Alex didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t breathe, so silent that he almost thought he was alone, nothing but a pale imitation of his imagination with him and the real Alex safe and sound at home.

A frozen image conjured from his mind…

He blinked and the image changed, eyes welling with tears that _he_ put there. He never could stop hurting him.

“I don’t matter…” Alex’s voice tapered off into a whisper. “I’m not worth the lives of your family.”

He couldn’t explain, didn’t know—didn’t know how to make him see…

At Caulfield, Alex had said that _he_ was his family. But to him, Alex was so much more than that. He always would be.

“You’re worth everything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And on that note—which is about as close to an open and honest admission of how he feels as Michael is gonna get whilst staying true to the character as he’s developed thus far—my emotions have *officially* been processed.
> 
> Thank you all for reading!


End file.
